


Devils Don’t Fly

by general_ly_sephiroth



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: A Distinct Lack of Self-Care, Abandonment Issues, Father-Son Relationship, Food, Gen, Hojo Sort-of Successfully Parenting, M/M, POV Third Person, Present Tense, Relationship Issues, Self-Isolation, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 08:03:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17545817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/general_ly_sephiroth/pseuds/general_ly_sephiroth
Summary: The thing that Sephiroth keeps coming back to is the wings. It gnaws at him for weeks: the thought follows him into strategy meetings, handing out assignments, working with the remaining Second and Third Classes, and into his off-duty hours. Contemplating the problem — the wings and their escape — interferes with sleep, with eating, and Sephiroth forces himself to push these mundane, routine things aside unless they are absolutely necessary.—In which Sephiroth isn’t coping and needs a mild intervention.





	Devils Don’t Fly

The thing that Sephiroth keeps coming back to is the wings. It doesn't bother him much — compared to their complete betrayal — that Angeal and Genesis both seem to have each sprouted one feathery wing apiece. It irks him somewhat more that either of them can fly in a straight line, a sentiment Hojo expresses after Genesis breaks part of his lab. Moments like these frustrate him because they demonstrate a possibility that he could perhaps be his father's son: though he'll die before admitting to that.

What really digs at Sephiroth, and not at Hojo, however, is his friends’ newfound insistence that they have wings and so it follows that must be monsters. Humans don’t have wings, after all. It’s the sort of illogic Genesis used to throw at him during spars when they were younger teens to try to do away with Sephiroth’s concentration. Shamefully, a decade older and now General Sephiroth instead of Cadet Sephiroth, the trick still works. 

It gnaws at him for weeks: the thought follows him into strategy meetings, handing out assignments, working with the remaining Second and Third Classes, and into his off-duty hours. Contemplating the problem — the wings and their escape — interferes with sleep, with eating, and Sephiroth forces himself to push these mundane, routine things aside unless they are absolutely necessary. Frustration mounts and its effect triples when Lazard leaves him too and he's stuck with an ever-shrinking program to run and the Board of Directors breathing down his neck. They want to know why recruitment has dropped (it’s a joint problem for HR and PR, but apparently General Sephiroth’s fault), why he's losing people and can't find them again, what Company secrets — and he can feel that capital ‘C’ — he's allowed to escape. None of them care that these are _people’s lives_ on the line. People they have worked with, eaten with, danced with at Company parties, and spoken with have vanished, but all that matters is the Company. The President’s lost a bastard — one rumor says he likes a damn sight more than Rufus — but all that matters is Lazard might have vanished with knowledge in tow. He spares not one ounce of his heart to care for the older of his sons. 

Given those facts and his own attachments to the problem, it takes all his self-control and Hojo's best "I am your father and you will _not_ have a tantrum that reflects poorly on either of us," glare (that, for some reason, his body is still trained to obey) for him to make it through the meeting with the Board without maiming anyone with something besides a glare. Heidegger barely escapes a tongue-lashing but Sephiroth gives him a look promising an excellent verbal beat-down to come once they’re out of earshot of the President. Dressing someone down properly is a skill he learned in the army and honed in Wutai. Heidegger’s never been on the receiving end of one of his but Sephiroth knows everyone on the board has heard the rumors. The Public Relations and Human Resources directors are in for it as well, as far as he’s concerned. They’re the ones refusing to step up recruitment and pinning it on him. Sephiroth has a long list of things to stay to both of them once the President leaves the room and his glare is making that that fact known.

He doesn’t get the chance.

After the interrogation disguised as a meeting is adjourned, Hojo has the sense to grab his offspring’s arm and bodily pull Sephiroth from the room before anybody can talk to either of them. For the last seven years he's been taller — and for most of his life, stronger — than this increasingly frail old man with his creaking, cracking joints, but the facts don't stop Hojo from somehow being able to keep him off-balance enough to shove him into the elevator and keep him there long enough to punch the button to close the doors before they can be followed. Sephiroth privately accuses him of exploiting physics but doesn’t dare grumble anything aloud: Hojo is clearly livid with him and anything he says will be used against him. Rare is the occasion Hojo drags Sephiroth back to his childhood home: Hojo usually prefers to save pushing him around this much for special occasions like injections or testing a new type of dosing method.

His father uses his executive override to key the elevator for nonstop service with the hand that doesn’t have a vice-like grip on Sephiroth’s arm, and hits the button for the floor that houses the executives' luxury apartments. Maybe Hojo isn’t as frail as his joints make him sound. Sephiroth would have no issue freeing himself if he wanted to do so but an average human would have to put in some effort.

Sephiroth is bullied through the door before either of them dare to speak. The second he opens his mouth, Hojo shushes him and maneuvers him to the sofa. "Sit down before you fall down," he snaps before he wheels around and back to the door to take off the lab coat and hang it up. "When did you eat last?"

It's a harder question to answer than he wants to admit. Hesitation is rare enough for him these days that it gets a raised brow and a tapping toe: if Sephiroth turns his head he'll see the professor's fists on his hips, glasses slipping down his nose, and that one frown he has yet to be able to decipher turning down his lips. Not answering is out of the question when he's in this awful mood. Another interrogation will be started, this time by the one person aside from Angeal and Genesis who knows how to hurt him best. Hojo will push and pick at him until he gets his answers and whatever else he wants of the General as well, so Sephiroth forces himself to seriously consider the question and give an honest answer.

"I'm not quite sure," he confesses after a moment. It seems like as good a time as any to suddenly become fascinated with his cuticles. Angeal and Genesis have large, strong hands too, though their fingers aren't quite as slender as his. They are human hands. Not the hands of a monster. Aren’t there non-monster creatures with such wings? The word is surely right on the tip of his tongue but he can’t recall it.

"Child, are you listening to me at all?" calls Hojo from the depths of the kitchen, his new location, clearly irritated.

It’s rare for Hojo to call him that instead of ‘my boy.’ The insult does not go unnoted. A scowl crosses Sephiroth's face. "I am not a child." 

"Grown men continue to care for themselves, or seek out the help they need in rough times." The scolding tone makes him inwardly cringe. "You're a SOLDIER, Sephiroth, but even _you_ need food and sleep. Just because you can last without it longer than others doesn't mean that you should. What are the people you leave behind supposed to do if you lose focus at the wrong moment? Are you going to leave me all alone in my old age because you couldn't find the inner discipline to eat and sleep properly when your lovers betrayed you? What about your men? What about that other First Class?"

A roll of his eyes is undoubtedly the best response to the nagging. Hojo doesn't need to see the guilt he is feeling. Doesn’t need to see him flinch. Doesn’t need to see the hurt those words inflict. Damn him for being right. "Okay. okay. You can tone down the Wutaian mother act," he deadpans at the scientist. At the irritatingly correct scientist.

Hojo pokes his head into the living room to give him a pointed glare. With the way the light hits the silver in his hair they definitely look more like father and son than they usually do: which is not really much at all. Sephiroth raises his hands in surrender, getting the point. Hojo may not be his _mother,_ but he _is_ his Wutaian parent. The only one too, as far as he knows: Sephiroth gave up on asking about Jenova years ago. His PHS vibrates with a text from Fair, drawing his attention as Hojo ducks back into the kitchen: no one else ever sends him texts besides his current second-in-command. The content prompts another roll of his eyes.

_‘Rumor mill says you were kidnapped by goons from SciDep in the middle of your review with the Board. You okay or am I outsourcing your job to some weirdo who likes paperwork? 'Cause Not It.’_

Fair has seen the mountain of work that exists from his and Lazard’s jobs combined. It’s not so bad when one lives on coffee alone, as he’s been doing, but the newly-minted First won’t be able to manage that for a long time yet. It will take many more years of injections to function on as little sleep as Sephiroth has been getting by with. He contemplates having Fair do the paperwork anyway: the boy needs to learn. Should he end up deflecting like his lovers someone will have to carry on in his stead and Fair holds the next highest rank.

_'I'm fine. Hojo noticed the impending symptoms of a slaughter and hid me away before I could damage any of our precious executives. I'm safe. Do not usurp my authority in my absence, Fair. As you were.'_

With most people there is a lag in replies: this eager young man is not most people. The reply comes almost immediately. _‘You and I have very different definitions of ‘fine.’ Is he reading over your shoulder? Blink twice if you need a rescue. ;-) And seriously, let me know if you need anything. I’ll handle the 3rds for you today. Take it easy._

It takes Sephiroth a few seconds to go from wondering how Fair knowns he is blinking, to realizing he’s joking, to being slightly astonished at the minor breach in protocol over the wink emoji, to realizing he has completely forgotten he is supposed to be working with the remainder of their Thirds that afternoon. The lapse in memory and control immediately frustrates him. Sephiroth is their General, and now their Acting Director. He is essentially doing the job of four people as he trains Fair to step into the command roles of Genesis and Angeal, while Human Resources hunts for someone who can fill Lazard’s shoes and not piss off the General — despite Sephiroth’s insistence that he would be fine with merely expanding the role of General if he had a few aide-de-camps.

No one wants to listen to him. They won’t step up recruitment, and they’re discussing handing purview of SOLDIER to _Heidegger,_ of all people. Sephiroth may betray Shin-Ra the first chance he has as well.

The Company paid for his entire upbringing. They educated him for war, sent him off to it get experience, molded him into the General of their army, and now they want to take all of it away from him: he has no idea what to do about any of it. He’s lost Angeal and Genesis. All he has left is Fair and Hojo and he’s not especially close to either of them.

There doesn’t seem to be a need for a reply, but Sephiroth fires off a sarcastic, _‘Yes, sir,’_ and then a far more sincere, _‘Thank you, Fair,’_ in rapid succession, and puts his phone away. There’s no need to keep speaking or give additional orders. If Fair truly needs something he will call. Hopefully it will be quiet and he can sit and just breathe for once: it seems to be Hojo’s intention to give him space somewhere familiar and quiet, somewhere not associated with his friendships, somewhere that — while he doesn’t entirely associate it with safety — he doesn’t associate with pain. His whole childhood was filled with pain, but it happened in the labs and the VR room: never in this space.

Did Genesis and Angeal ever have to suffer poking and prodding as kids? Mako injections? Time in the tanks? Did they know about the wings they had before the last few weeks? How could they ever think such a change could make them monsters?

They’ve been to war and killed hundreds. Thousands. The three of them and the men under their command slaughtered their way across a nation in Shin-Ra’s name and made widows and orphans. On his command, they burned villages, lit fire to the history of families, of clans, of culture, and made sure those lines were extinguished. 

But having a wing? Being the result of an experiment that neither of them could control?

That’s where they draw the line?

Sephiroth thinks it’s ridiculous. 

By the time he leaves Hojo’s apartment, stuffed to the brim with some spicy tofu and rice dish he hasn’t had in years but is now going to crave for weeks, Sephiroth has resolved to tell them how stupid they are when he finds them again. He’ll tell how stupid they are, and to come home, because if wings make men monsters and more or less committing genocide against a nation doesn’t, he’ll slaughter his way across the world to find them and drag them back home again, even if it means there’s nothing left but the three of them and their bed.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written in this fandom in over a decade, and not at all with these three characters. I hope you liked it. When it comes to Sephiroth and Hojo I see them getting along as adults because they work together so they have to (from Sephiroth’s end). Hojo is, of course, far more interested in his life’s work and very eager to step in and smack him upside the head with a metaphorical or real clipboard and make him get his act together so he doesn’t cause either of them to look bad. Even so, he’s secretly worried about him.
> 
> I have a tumblr. I’m hardly on it. I have a Reddit: I’m on that way more. Same username for both.


End file.
